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They left at the gray, humid dawn, the cool wind, perfumed by the omnipresent sea that tousled the trees in a crowded suburbia. Nora joined them, as she put it to make sure Rose kept her hands off Peter, but really for more personal reasons of wanting to share the adventure, that she was only beginning to understand.
Rose’s foray into the past began to look appealing to Nora. She had been used to thinking the past was only a place where memories of questionable authenticity were kept and regrets were harbored. Nora had learned long ago not to venture into the minefield that was her parents’ past, and grew impatient when Peter discussed his past adventures that had nothing to do with her. The only past with which she had ever been comfortable was Tristan’s babyhood. She abhorred the day coming when this memory would be all she would have left of him.
Peter brought them south out of the city, past the low hills around Bombay and further down Route 1 where the Waitkato River flowed parallel to the road like another lane. Rose recalled the scenes of her drive down to Rotorua, and was glad Peter drove this time. Peter and Nora sat quietly in the front seat together, murmuring observations on the trip as they might have done all their married life together, familiar with the terrain and with each other. Rose sat alone in the back seat, as the gray dampness lifted and the sun flirted with an appearance, and watched the backs of their heads, their profiles as they spoke to each other, telegraphing with a look or nod, and murmuring clipped phrases by the handful, occasionally throwing their conversation back to Rose to be polite, but she would rather they did not. She wanted to listen to them speak, and recall her mother’s accent. She would not hear it again for a long time, perhaps never.
Through the gap in the Hakarimata Range they continued, the road and river, until they reached Hamilton.
Shirley Omstead Hinton lived with her sister, both widowed, in an old house on a quiet residential street.
“You fancy popping in on strangers, do you, Rose? It’s become a hobby, hasn’t it?” Nora said from the front seat, peering under the sun visor to see if anyone was stirring behind the curtain at the door. Someone was. Rose had called last night to arrange the visit; they were expected.
“Whatever you do, don’t lie down on the rug and drift off to sleep.”
***
Shirley kept looking Rose up and down for signs of Ruby Fitzmichael, but found none and Rose was sadly aware of this. Rose sat quietly, hunched over a teacup, a plate of cookies, and thin old, water-damaged photo album, looking up with a sad and sweet expression of longing at Shirley as she narrated her memories.
Nora was at first dubious, instantly wishing they had not interrupted these two old ladies on a Sunday morning, but when glances to communicate this to Peter were oblivious to him as he gulped his tea with a happy grin still mentally congratulating himself on his deed as well as his researching prowess, Nora began to relax and let things be.
Shirley spoke of mustering on cold mornings, plowing with a team of work horses on a hot afternoon, channeling frantic whirlwinds of sheep through the sheep dip, and producing more from the land during those dreadful war years than had been done by men on the land before the war. Proud of this, but in characteristic Kiwi manner quickly added,
“Oh, it was just nothing special, really. We just did our duty. That’s all.”
She gave Rose three snapshots from the album. Ruby and Shirley sitting on the fencing of a sheep pen with Mr. Fowler standing in front of them.
“He was a lovely man,” Shirley said, “Always firm about showing us what to do and no nonsense, but we caught on quick and he was proud of us and said so. He couldn’t have managed without us, and said so, too.”
The second showed her mother sitting on a grassy slope, half leaning back on her elbows. She looked away from the camera, off into some distance, with a calm expression of sweetness, and yet still appeared as someone in possession of remarkable strength, someone with a past that had made her that way. A dog crouched behind her and rested his face on her shoulder. They seemed to take comfort in each other, she and the dog. He was her dog, and his name was Jack. She had to leave him behind. He was the best dog in the world, and she could not bear ever to have another.
Shirley drew back, pleased with Rose’s initial gasp at the striking photo. Shirley cast a quick, happy glance to Nora and Peter and cocked her head.
“Didn’t think your mother could ever be so young, did you?” Shirley said, “Well, no one ever thinks of their mum as a young person once. Your mum, she was so dear to me. She was like my own sister. She wasn’t what I would call a jolly girl at the time, no there was too much that was sad and hard times for her, but she was a still a good person to be with. She had a way of being content despite everything.”
The third photo, of her mother and father on their wedding day was taken on a gray morning, not unlike this morning. Her mother and father stood just outside the doorway of a church, with another woman and man as attendants flanking them on either side.
“That’s me, there. I was her bridesmaid,” Shirley said, looking at the photo through the bifocal section of her glasses, “and that was a bloke from your dad’s camp. Nice lad, his name should be written on the back of the photo.”
Rose turned it over. Their names were all on the back of the photo, and the date.
“Ted Gadolfini,” Rose replied, knowing the name without having to read it, as her mother had told her. Private Gadolfini had been killed on Tarawa. Her mother and Shirley were dressed in their Land Service dress uniforms and her father and his best man were in their Marine uniforms.
“She couldn’t afford a bride’s dress in those days,” Shirley said, “That’s all we had. Just coming off the Depression, remember. But Mr. Fowler paid for their hotel as a gift for the honeymoon. Mr. Fowler even gave her away. Wasn’t that nice?”
“God bless him,” Rose muttered to the photo, “I have a picture at home, a formal studio portrait they had taken in Wellington on their honeymoon. Both of them are in their uniforms like this. They are taken in profile, with my father’s face just behind my mother’s. Neither of them are wearing their hats. You just see their faces touching. It’s a beautiful picture.”
“I wish we had not lost contact, your mum and I,” Shirley said, “but she moved to the U.S.A., and after the war I got married and my husband and I lived in Australia for many years. We returned here to retire about twenty years ago.”
“She would have loved to have written to you, Ma’am.” Rose said, clasping Shirley’s small, thin hand with hers, “She really loved you, and always spoke of those days, just as you do, with a sense of wonder that it had really ever happened.”
Shirley nodded, smiling, satisfied.
“Yes. Yes.”
***
They said little on the ride back to Auckland. Rose drank in the green hills for what she accepted could be the last time, and in her mind, a quiet echo. I did it, Ma. I met Shirley. I talked to your Shirley, Ma. I talked to her about you.
Nora turned over her shoulder and glanced toward Rose in the back seat.
“Sleeping?”
“No.”
“What do you really think of Tristan’s plans, then?”
“I don’t know if I would call them written in stone,” Rose said. “He has a strong desire to see things for himself. I know what that’s like. You couldn’t stop him if you tried, Nora, and you know you’re not going to try. He’s welcome to stay with me for a long as he likes. For that matter, so are you.”
Nora scoffed and looked out the window, but kept seeing Shirley’s dim lounge which seemed eerily refulgent with what could have only been memories and some mysteriously strong sense of purpose.
“You haven’t had your OE yet,” Rose continued, “better get that out of the way, don’t you think? You’ll be Mrs. Hinton’s age and without the photos.”
“They didn’t have OE’s. Nor did my mother, though I expect she was supposed to have continued her education in England were it not for the war. No, they did without OEs, didn’t they?”
“They had far greater adventures.”
“That they did.” Peter said.
“Come to Massachusetts,” Rose teased.
Nora rolled her eyes in Peter’s direction, smiling, ascertaining with a look if he thought the idea was at all ridiculous.
“I think we should let Tris go it alone for awhile,” he said, “That’s what the OE’s all about. But I think after a time he wouldn’t mind us popping over, and let him show us around.”
“What, really? Do you really want to go?” Nora asked.
“Do you?”
“Bloody hell, I don’t know. Honestly, you two are such tourists.”
“I think,” Peter continued, “that by July or August he should be well settled in and wouldn’t mind a visit from the old folks.”
“You want us to travel in July?!”
“It only gives you seven months to pack, I know....”
“Rose, really, what do you think?” Nora asked.
“Nora, July is quite warm in Massachusetts. It should be lovely.” Peter said.
“Hot.” Rose corrected him.
“I don’t really know about all this. There’s leave from work....” Nora said.
“Get yourself a passport, Nora,” Rose said, “and let Peter figure it out. Peter’s the guy to go to when you need to know something. He’s the man with the plan. If you want to come, I’ll be there at the airport waiting for you. Nothing would please me more. I want to see how you cope with jet lag. I have hardwood floors.”
***
They returned to Peter and Nora’s home for a late lunch. Tristan was carrying in a few cardboard boxes he had been sent to retrieve from his grandmother’s house.
“I don’t know if I’m actually cleaning Mum’s house or just transferring all her junk to this one,” Nora said, glancing into a box of mementoes.
“I’ve been trying to convince your mom to visit us in the us,” Rose said to Tristan, with a teasing look at Nora. Nora did not respond in kind, but looked searchingly at Tristan, who set another box on the kitchen table.
“You are really keen on this, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Yeah, Mum.”
“Yes, of course you are. Why wouldn’t you be? Any young man would be if he had the same opportunity.”
She took the portrait photo of her father in his Royal New Zealand Army uniform, looking thin, handsome, and hopelessly young. There was no look of confidence in his expression, only what seemed a rather strange, grim, staunch acknowledgment of whatever horror might await him in a future that was closer than he thought. She thought of the photos of Rose’s mother, her Aunt Ruby, and Shirley, and the vibrant green of the hills along the roadside when Peter drove them home. How would she give all this to her son? How could he keep it in his heart if she did not first learn to take it into her own?
It occurred to Nora that Peter did not have the infamous New Zealand “island fever,” nor did Tristan, not really. It was herself.
Her mother did as well. That was it. They had a great deal in common.
Nora passed the photo of her father to her son, and kissed her husband.
***
At the airport terminal, Rose hugged and kissed Peter and Tristan.
“Think about it, talk it over,” she said, “and you’ve got my email address. My home is yours. You know,” she said to Nora, “you’ve gotta go on that OE sometime, you loser.”
“We’ll get her there yet, Rose,” Peter said, “and I may send some travelers your way soon. And I don’t mean just Tristan and Rewa.”
“Already?”
“Reg and Karen. We have to start somewhere, don’t we? They want to see New York City, and you’ve already told them you know it like the back of your hand.”
He glanced slyly at Tristan, and the two of them inched closer to Rose in a rugby-like scrum and softly began to sing in their deep, men’s voices: “Now is the hour, when we must say goodbye....”
Nora invited herself into their huddle, and softy added her own wavering, slightly off-key singing voice to a chorus of “Now Is the Hour.”
They reduced Rose to red-faced, trembling tears.
Nora came for a quiet hug, and Rose stooped for her.
“Thank you for coming to New Zealand.”
Tearing, Rose playfully kissed the top of Nora’s head.
“Wouldn’t have missed it...for the world.”
Nora took Rose’s face in her hands and gently kissed her on both wet cheeks.
“Cheers, Luv.”
“Tough bikkies.” Rose answered sincerely.
“Sorry?”
“Like that? Goodbye and good luck sort of thing?”
“No, dear. Tough bikkies does not mean that.”
“Must kill Tristan.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Oh, and I have a confession,” Rose said, “I ate at a McDonald’s here three times in three different cities. But I had no idea I was doing it, I just went there. My car just went there. You know?”
“And a right-hand controls Kiwi car at that.”
From over Rose’s shoulder Nora could see Trevor John approach them, with an expression of relief that told he must have been looking for them for a long while. Nora pulled away from Rose and patted her to turn around.
“Aha. I rather thought you and Trevor John shared a moment.”
Rose spotted him. Nora muttered as she pulled her husband and son away to the observation windows,
“Safe journey, my dear.”
Trevor John trotted up to Rose, glancing at Nora and her retreating family, and meeting Rose’s robin’s egg-blue eyes. All the words he had thought to say on the flight up from Christchurch were suddenly lost. He lightly, tenuously bumped the back of his hand against her wrist, like one of the security people at the airport back home, and she suddenly grasped it. He put his other hand into her other hand.
“Well, here you are,” he said, frowning, “turn my back for one moment, and you’ve gone missing!”
“What are you...?”
“And you’re a lousy tourist. You haven’t done well at all,” he berated her. He held up a yellow plastic duty free shop bag and opened it for her.
“Right,” he said, “You’ve got to do this properly. You do want all your friends to know you’ve been to Godzone, don’t you? Greatest nation on earth? Of course, you do. Here, we’ve got your New Zealand T-shirt, your little stuffed kiwi, your All Blacks socks. Lollies shaped like the South Island.”
She laughed as he drew each item out of the bag. He draped the T-shirt over her shoulder. He made the stuffed kiwi kiss her cheek with a loud smacking noise.
“And here are some cardigans for your sisters and nieces. I hope they like them.”
“My gosh, you’re good.”
“And for blokes, this bag here. Prezzies for Christmas. Finest wool products in the world, here in En Zed. When it comes to yuletide sentiment, I like to Say it With Sheep.”
“You are the man of my dreams.” She said it so quietly that he could barely hear her.
“Of course. And this suitcase is to you, from me. Those grotty cases you arrived here with are shocking ugly. Can’t think what’s wrong you. Lovely lady like yerself. I’m putting the prezzies in this new suitcase so you can check it with the others.”
“Trevor John...I....”
“Here’s your name on the luggage tag. Did rather well, didn’t I?”
“You are definitely manager material.”
“I know. That’s what I decided. I’m too bloody good them.”
“Your job?”
The tinny voice on the loudspeaker interrupted them.
“....this is the last boarding call for flight one, three, sux to Kuala Lumpur....”
“Almost forgot, one extra large jar of Marmite,” he continued, undeterred.
Rose eyed the jar warily.
“....United Airlines flight eight, four, two to Los Angeles now boarding first....”
They both quickly leaned over the bag, and kissed, pulling away at the next announcement hammering at them like Divine Wrath.
“...Qantas flight one, zero, sivin to Sydney...”
“Right, I’ll tell you now why I’m here,” he began quickly, as if forcing himself to have the courage to do it.
“I know why you’re here.”
“Do you?” he stopped short, “Why then?”
“Because...” she smiled herself at the discovery, “...we utterly enjoy each other.”
“...flight eight, four, two now boarding rows....”
“Shall I come to Massachusetts?” he began quickly, trying to collect his thoughts and at least some of the things he had really wanted to say.
“Yes. Yes. Absolutely.” she nodded emphatically.
“I’ll spend some time with my father first. He’s still here in Auckland.”
“Oh, I’m glad.”
“I wasn’t really afraid of him, you know,” he said, “I was just tired of letting him down.”
“I know.”
“I’ll make plans...I’ll call you.” He began to take the souvenirs and presents and place them back into the new suitcase. He folded her fingers around the handle.
“Let Peter, Nora’s husband over there, help you set up your travel,” Rose said, “He’ll set you right.”
“Good as gold,” he sighed in relief, realizing she had accepted him.
“I can’t believe you’re here, but I sort of kept looking for you,” she said, with a sudden, almost bizarre sense of sureness about everything.
“...United flight eight, four, two ....”
“I’ll see you then, Luv. Go on, you’ll miss your flight.”
“Oh, God, could you please always do that?”
“What?”
“Call me ‘luv.’”
He smiled again, the big open smile she would have paid to see again, but he gave it to her for free.
“Trevor John...there are so many differences...you have no idea...I want you to know me. I want you to really know me so there are no surprises.”
“I like surprises.”
“I pray y’know. Before I fall asleep, I have this habit of praying. Not aloud, just inside my head.”
“Will you pray for me, then?” He smiled, only partly making fun of her.
“That’s a given.”
“Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it?”
“So many differences, you have no idea.”
“No expectations.” He touched his nose and his forehead to hers, like a Maori, “let’s just see if we can make each other happy.”
“Last call United flight eight, four two....”
“I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll be at the airport whenever you decide to come,” she said, with confidence, “I’ll take care of you. I’m good at that.”
***
Rose had the window seat, but was on the side of the plane opposite to the terminal and could not see Trevor John, Nora, Peter and Tristan standing together, waving through the lighted windows. She would not see them continue to watch as the plane lifted and disappeared from their view into a black sky with its strange and immense, and unfamiliar pattern of stars.
***
The next day her mother looked up from bingo in the activities room to see Nora standing over her, with an interested expression but in no evident hurry. Nora nodded to the other ladies at the table and said good morning to them.
“Are you winning?” Nora asked her mother.
“I’m not sure, but I think everybody is supposed to win eventually, at something. I may have my day, yet.”
“I have to return to work, but I thought I could stop by for a bit every day. Would that be all right?”
“Yes, that would be lovely. Oh, that’s done for me. See, that lady over there, she’s won.”
“Has she? Who is she?”
“I don’t know her name, but she’s won.”
“Is there another game, or can we chat?”
“There will always be other games. If not today, tomorrow then. Where shall we go? Sit down over there?”
“Yes, Mum, that’ll do for us,” Nora said, congratulating herself on how well she was doing. It was only for forty-five minutes. Surely she could manage that. Steady on, she thought. Just keep it pleasant, and don’t let her get cranky. Then she won’t be irritating you, and you won’t be irritating her. It won’t kill you to try.
“I’ll never get on here,” her mother said, darkening.
“Mum,” Nora said, gently, “just because it’s strange and different doesn’t mean it can’t be home.” She took her mother’s hands in her lap and caressed them as if to warm them, as Rose might have done.
***
At the same time, over in another part of Auckland, the front garden was overgrown, and that caused Trevor John to stop, look over it all with a new sense of dread he had not foreseen. Things do not stay the same, after all. Not for anyone. They get better, or they get worse.
He imagined that his father had long since died, or had moved away, and he had not known.
But, the name was still on the postal box.
He imagined then that his father was ill and incapacitated. Perhaps bedridden. There was no one to look after him. Unless he had a nurse or aide. Then he ought to have some kind of care, someone to feed him? Someone to give him medicine? No one to care for the garden.
Trevor John notice a figure standing behind the door, with his head and shoulders, hunched, in the glass. Then it opened, and it was his father, looking grey, and sallow, and slumped.
“What do you want?” his father asked.
“I wanted to see you.”
“What do you want?”
“I wanted to talk to you, Dad. I want to say I’m sorry for not keeping in touch. So, what do you reckon? Can we have chat?”
“Who are you?”
Trevor John’s expression relaxed from hopeful tension to the exact dullness with which his father stared back at him. In a swift stream of realization, Trevor John accepted his chance for reconciliation was gone forever.
“I’m Trevor, your son.”
“You’re not my son.”
“Are you alone?”
His father did not answer, but looked back over his shoulder at the kitchen. Someone else came to the door, a woman.
“Yes, what is it, please?”
“Gidday, I’m Mr. Ngiao’s son, Trevor.”
“Are you?” She seemed pleased, and that reassured him. “I’m Mary, and I look after Mr. Ngiao. Would you like to come in?”
“Yeah.”
He climbed up the three steps that were more familiar to him than any home he had ever lived, though he had not lived here in over twenty-five years. He and his father never took their eyes off each other.
***
At that same time, it was a quarter to midnight in Connecticut when Rose’s plane landed. She carried her now three suitcases, and stumbled with them through the small, nearly empty terminal, kiosks shuttered, restaurants and souvenir shops that were dark. The man driving the shuttle van looked as tired as she was, and she did not attempt to make conversation with him. At any rate, he was her countryman and therefore the rules had changed. No longer an American tourist, she was a New Englander again, and so was he, and so they said nothing to each other. He left her in the section of the vast parking lot where she had left her car. She found it under a streetlight.
A three-week layer of snow blanketed the car, on top of an inch of ice that caked the windshield.
She fished for the keys, opened the trunk and wearily lifted the luggage into the trunk. She retrieved the snow brush and scraper from the back seat and hacked away enough ice to see. She opened the passenger door and eased herself down into the seat. There was no steering wheel. She laughed at her mistake.
Rose got out, and walked around to the driver’s door on the left side of the car. Before she slid into the seat, she glanced around at the snow banks along the edge of the parking lot, and marveled that this was the first time she had been outdoors and breathed fresh air since New Zealand. Her breath condensation floated to the streetlight, and beyond where she saw Orion, as she was used to seeing him, upright and facing the usual direction, pretending as though he had never left his post.
“G’night, Tris,” she told the stars.
The tattered flag, the proverbial flag that was still there, caught her eye, fluttering once or twice on the antenna.
Rose got in the car, rolled all the windows down to let the sub-freezing breeze flow freely around her, like a slap, and she breathed deeply, and turned the car radio on loudly because she was afraid of falling asleep before she could get home. It would still be another half hour before Massachusetts Welcomed Her.
“Right-o then, Rose,” she said, as she brought the car out of the parking lot, and nudged it out onto the access road, “Just stay on the right side of the road now, Rose. You can do it, girl. No worries.”